The controversial national elections of 1957, 1961, 1964 and 1968 in Guyana helped shape the boundaries of political and social life. Collectively, these elections served to maintain ethnic division among an increasingly fatigued population. In 1968, the ruling party in government, the PNC (People's National Congress) began to "take measures" in the state and society to consolidate its position. In this case, the PNC, the more moderate of the two political parties, was considered "socialist" and the PPP retained its image as a "communist" organization until the 1980s. For American and British decision-makers, the question of ideology was of the utmost importance. Indeed, when the country erupted in three years of ethnic violence between Africans and Indians in 1962, 1963 and 1964, it was clear that in Guyana the question of communism had taken on serious concern.12 This was evident in the CIA's involvement in assisting the unions to undermine the PPP government. By the end of 1964, when the dust had settled, scores of people had been killed and injured. The intervention of the Americans and the British in these unrest and the participation of local politicians in this division had the effect of widening a simultaneous racial and ideological divide in society as a whole. Soon after the American and British intervention that brought about critical changes in the electoral system, the PNC regime, facilitated by an alliance with the conservative political party United Force, achieved power in the 1964 elections. 13 illustrated by the activities of the Nouveau Monde group in the early 1960s. Created in 1963, the Nouveau Monde group and established...... middle of paper ......ts revolutionary commitment in favor of the subversion of the governments of Latin America and of the Caribbean allowed Guyana to place itself in a radical posture without appearing hostile to the United States.18 This duality of good relations with Washington on the one hand, and with Cuba and the Third World, will be successfully “balanced” by the Burnham regime until 1985. In short, despite the diplomatic radicalization of the PNC foreign policy in the 1970s, "relations between Guyana and the United States never really took the form of outright confrontation nor reached the level of an irremediable rupture - with the exception of the Angolan question in 1976. The pragmatic sensitivity of the leaders to the realities of American foreign policy The hemispheric presence exerted, to a certain extent, a moderating influence on the limits that Guyana was prepared to achieve to avoid a total breakdown of relations.."19